Nora's Blog

Featured Post

2/3/15When asked in early 2014, 17.1 percent of high school seniors and 16.2 percent of 10th graders reported using e-cigarettes in the previous month. We are still wrestling with whether or not e-cigarettes pose a danger, but their popularity among youth combined with society’s past experiences with tobacco and other addictive substances demands that we urge caution around these products. Read More.

Recent Posts

enero del 2015The changes in the brain common to obesity and drug addiction are especially pertinent to the struggles teens face to resist drugs, because adolescence is a crucial period both of susceptibility to the rewards of drugs and of vulnerability to the long-term effects of drug exposure Read More.

diciembre del 2014At the end of a year that has seen further tragic deaths from addiction and new designer drugs that put young people at risk, today's results from the 2014 Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey of drug use among adolescents provide a dose of welcome optimism. Read More.

noviembre del 2014I have written before about the reproducibility crisis in the health sciences. High percentages of published findings are failing to be reproduced, and this has prompted NIH Institutes and other funding agencies, as well as scientific journals and universities, to take measures to improve how science is taught, funded, conducted, and published. Read More.

octubre del 2014As social acceptance and public policy around marijuana shift, and especially if legalized recreational use becomes more widespread, we will need to consider the influence and potential regulation of its marketing. Read More.

septiembre del 2014Opioid prescriptions have increased three-fold over the past two decades, and we have seen how this skyrocketing availability of medications has helped create a new drug abusing population, some of whom suffer severe health consequences Read More.

septiembre del 2014We have long known that American Indian communities are particularly vulnerable to problems with substance use, which are tied in part to limited socioeconomic opportunity. But because national surveys fail to fully capture drug use patterns on or near reservations, the true scope of the problem has been elusive. Read More.

agosto del 2014In a series of recent articles, The New York Times’ editors presented a case for repealing the federal ban on marijuana, including the disproportionate impact of current marijuana laws on minorities. While there is no question that we should rectify any injustices associated with such policies, we also need to consider and prepare for the escalation in social and health costs that could result from creating a third legal drug in this country. We should be thoughtfully examining all policy and regulatory options available to minimize harms to society and promote Americans’ safety, well-being, and competitiveness Read More.

julio del 2014 As we wrote in early May, the time is ripe for a large prospective cohort study that will comprehensively assess the effects of adolescent substance use on the developing brain. Read More.

junio del 2014Almost 1.1 million Americans are currently living with the HIV virus, and nearly a sixth of those don’t even know they are infected. That means they aren’t getting needed treatment, and it means they could be passing the infection on to others without knowing. Read More.